Sarkozy, Nicolas

▪ 2007

      In 2006 Nicolas Sarkozy, France's interior minister and head of the country's ruling centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party, established himself as a leading contender for the French presidency. Despite his complicated relationship with Pres. Jacques Chirac, the charismatic and outspoken Sarkozy was almost certain to be chosen the UMP's standard-bearer in the 2007 election.

      Sarkozy was born in Paris on Jan. 28, 1955, to immigrant Greek and Hungarian parents. He qualified (1981) as a lawyer and pursued (1979–81) advanced studies in political science at the Institut d'Études Politiques in Paris. A hyperactive and ambitious politician, Sarkozy in 1983 was elected mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, a well-to-do Paris suburb, where he served until 2002. He first made his mark on the national scene in 1993 when he became budget minister and official spokesman in the government of Prime Minister Édouard Balladur. The latter had been put forward by rightist politicians, including Chirac, to serve as prime minister under Socialist Pres. François Mitterrand, with the idea that someone like Chirac would contest the 1995 presidential election. Sarkozy, however, encouraged Balladur to run for president himself and thereby earned the lasting enmity of Chirac, to whom he had once been very close. Balladur lost to Chirac, and Sarkozy was shut out of the subsequent centre-right government of 1995–97.

      In 2002, after Chirac's reelection as president was quickly followed by the election of another centre-right administration, Sarkozy returned to office as interior minister, a post he held for nearly two years until he became finance minister in March 2004. He had little time to achieve much in this job, apart from partially privatizing utilities, before Chirac ordered him to choose between his government post and becoming president of the UMP, the neo-Gaullist party that Chirac had founded. Sarkozy chose the UMP job and quit the government in November 2004. In the wake of the May 2005 referendum in which French voters rejected the proposed European Union constitution, Chirac was compelled to invite Sarkozy to return as interior minister in a new government to be headed by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin.

      In late 2005 Sarkozy had to contend with three weeks of rioting in the poorer suburbs of Paris and other cities. Critics blamed the interior minister for inciting the car-burning protesters by calling them “scum,” but his supporters liked his hard-line stand on law and order and his support for tougher immigration laws. In early 2006 Sarkozy's stock rose as Villepin's sank. Student protests broke out over a youth labour law that Villepin was widely judged to have handled badly, and during the complicated Clearstream scandal, Villepin denied allegations that he had tried to smear his rival's reputation by claiming that Sarkozy was involved in corruption. Though Sarkozy did not, as many expected, immediately resign in protest, he was likely to make that move before the 2007 presidential race, which observers predicted would be a contentious one.

David Buchan

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▪ president of France

born Jan. 28, 1955, Paris, France

 

 French politician, who became president of France in 2007.

      Sarkozy was born to immigrant Greek and Hungarian parents. He qualified as a lawyer (1981) and pursued advanced studies in political science at the Institut d'Études Politiques in Paris (1979–81). An ambitious and highly skilled politician, Sarkozy in 1983 was elected mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, where he served until 2002. He first made his mark on the national scene in 1993 when he became budget minister and official spokesman in the government of Prime Minister Édouard Balladur (Balladur, Édouard). Balladur had been put forward by rightist politicians, including Jacques Chirac (Chirac, Jacques), to serve as prime minister under Socialist Pres. François Mitterrand (Mitterrand, François), with the idea that someone—such as Chirac—would contest the 1995 presidential election. Sarkozy, however, encouraged Balladur to run for president himself and thereby earned the lasting enmity of Chirac, to whom he had once been very close. Balladur lost to Chirac, and Sarkozy was shut out of the subsequent centre-right government of 1995–97.

      In 2002, after Chirac's reelection as president was quickly followed by the election of another centre-right administration, Sarkozy returned to office as interior minister, a post he held for nearly two years until he became finance minister in March 2004. Soon after, however, Chirac asked him to choose between his government post and becoming president of the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party, the neo-Gaullist successor party to the Rally for the Republic that Chirac had founded. Sarkozy chose the UMP job and quit the government in November 2004. In the wake of the May 2005 referendum in which French voters rejected the proposed European Union (EU) constitution, Chirac invited Sarkozy to return as interior minister in a new government to be headed by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin.

 In late 2005 Sarkozy had to contend with three weeks of rioting in the less-affluent suburbs of Paris and other cities. Although critics blamed him for inciting the car-burning protesters by calling them “scum,” his supporters approved of his hard-line stance on law and order as well as his call for tougher immigration laws. In 2007 Sarkozy ran for president of France. He finished first in the initial round of voting on April 22, winning 31 percent of the vote. In the runoff election on May 6, Sarkozy defeated Ségolène Royal (Royal, Ségolène) of the Socialist Party, capturing 53 percent of the vote. Sarkozy was sworn in as president on May 16, 2007. He promised a “rupture” with France's past, including radical economic reforms that would reduce taxes and liberalize the country's labour market, and closer relations with the United States.

Ed.

      In the parliamentary elections of June 2007 Sarkozy's UMP did less well than expected but still well enough to provide a comfortable majority for the new government of François Fillon, whom Sarkozy had appointed as prime minister just after assuming the presidency. In the subsequent cabinet reshuffle, Sarkozy made several surprising appointments, including the country's first woman finance minister (Christine Lagarde), the first full cabinet member of North African origin (Rachida Dati), and a maverick Socialist (Bernard Kouchner) as foreign minister. Sarkozy also chose Socialists for several other key appointments.

      In the first few months of his presidency Sarkozy carried out some of his promised labour market and tax-cutting reforms. He decided not to scrap the 35-hour maximum on the standard workweek (a landmark Socialist law) but rather to use tax relief on overtime pay to moderate the law's rigidity. Other new business-friendly laws restricted the right to strike and cut off unemployment payments to people who turned down certain job offers. Sarkozy also won narrow approval from the legislature for a constitutional change to limit the presidency to two five-year terms.

      While maintaining Europe as the prime focus of his foreign policy, Sarkozy was relatively pro-American compared with his predecessors. He showed signs of being more accommodating to the United States (especially with his active interest in a positive outcome in Iraq) and of being somewhat more troublesome to some of his euro zone partners (with his criticism of restrictive European Central Bank monetary policy). He also stressed EU complementarity to NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), friendship with Israel, and a tough attitude toward Iranian nuclear weapons.

      In July 2007 Sarkozy drew worldwide attention for the prominent part he and his wife Cécilia played in gaining the release of six Bulgarian medics (charged with infecting children with HIV) who had been held in Libya since 1999. While applauding the release, some in France and the EU criticized Sarkozy's high-profile involvement as well as his wife's participation. Meanwhile, to the relief of many EU partners, Sarkozy agreed to put forward a revamped EU treaty for approval by the French parliament and not by referendum (as Chirac had tried and failed to do in 2005). His efforts in support of this agreement, the so-called Lisbon Treaty, were rewarded when the parliament ratified it in February 2008. Sarkozy continued to play a vocal role in European affairs once France assumed the presidency of the EU, which rotates among member countries, that July. The same month, Sarkozy oversaw the launch of the Mediterranean Union, an international organization made up of Mediterranean rim countries in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.

      Although the French media had traditionally avoided close examination of the private lives of French leaders, Sarkozy's personal problems were well known even before his presidency because of the publicity surrounding a temporary separation from Cécilia, his second wife. His divorce from her in October 2007 and his marriage to singer Carla Bruni in February 2008 drew increased media scrutiny. Many in France viewed the interest in Sarkozy's private life as distasteful and inappropriate, and some accused Sarkozy himself of cultivating a flashy image to distract the public from negative aspects of his administration.

David Buchan Ed.

 

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